


Don't Let Them See You Cry

by icewhisper



Series: Holiday Cheer & Tears [13]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, M/M, Mick is having a bad day, Survivor Guilt, and all it entails
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-17 21:49:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16982436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: “You’re gonna regret it if you don’t go,” Len told him on the day of the funeral, perched on the edge of the shitty mattress in their shittier safe house.





	Don't Let Them See You Cry

**Author's Note:**

> Some short additional warnings. It's a grief-heavy fic, so Mick's views of religion and the suicidal ideation (short as it is) is influenced by that. There's no actual self-harm, though.

“You’re gonna regret it if you don’t go,” Len told him on the day of the funeral, perched on the edge of the shitty mattress in their shittier safe house.

He’d been awake for hours, curled around the spare pillow Len had left behind when he’d slipped out of bed that morning, but he hadn’t moved. No coffee. No breakfast. No dragging himself to the hook where Len had left his suit.

Len didn’t get it. He _couldn’t_ go. He couldn’t face the line of closed caskets and think about the little kids hidden away in coffins that shouldn’t come that small. He’d _done it_. He’d killed them.

How could he go there and pretend he had any right to mourn them?

“I’m not going,” he grumbled into the pillow as he clutched it to him tighter. “No one wants me there.”

“Lisa does,” Len said, voice soft and… God. He knew Len was hurting too. Emma had been Lisa’s best friend and Len had _liked_ his family. “We both know I’m no good with this stuff.”

Stuff. Being normal. Len could take a heist and plan it out to the second, but the second someone confronted him with something like feelings, he was lost. He managed with Lisa, because she was only slightly better than him with people. They called each other partners, if only because Len couldn’t always handle _boyfriend_ and they’d always have crime to link them when feelings couldn’t.

Len sighed when he didn’t reply and stood, mattress creaking as he went. “Your stuff’s there if you change your mind.”

He didn’t.

 

 

He should have gone. He _knew_ he should have gone to pay his respects to a family who deserved better than what they got with him and to beg forgiveness. He should have gotten down on his knees in the funeral mass and prayed for them – pray that they weren’t in pain anymore and that they were somewhere _good_ – but he didn’t know how to pray for this. He didn’t know how to offer himself to a god who decided letting them die like that was okay and believe that He was taking care of them.

He didn’t know if he could believe in a god who let them die instead of him.

He thought of the gold cross his mother used to fasten around his neck before church every Sunday morning. She’d never approved of the way he’d fiddle with it throughout the service, but playing with a cross was safer than playing with a lighter.

The cross was gone now, melted or lost somewhere in the ruins of the house. He wouldn’t go back to look. He wasn’t going back there ever again.

His chest went tight, breath trapped behind a lump in his throat, and… Fuck. What was he supposed to do now? His family was gone. His aunts and uncles had never cared for him and the way he’d watch a flame. _He’s got the devil in him_ , they’d say while they urged his parents to have him sent away. Maybe they’d been right – about him, about how something evil had touched him and never let go.

A voice in the back of his mind that sounded a lot like Len scoffed and reminded him to not hold so much stock in religion that he ignored mental health. His aunts and uncles called it possession, but the shrinks at the juvie center called it pyromania. Their meds had worked to an extent, even if Mick hadn’t always liked the way they’d made him feel, but the doctor the courts had him seeing had been nice. He’d been setting less fires.

What did any of it matter now?

His breath shuddered. He missed them. He missed his mom and his dad and the way he could always hear the little kids all over the house.

Did they know, he wondered. Did they know he hadn’t meant to set the fire? That he’d wanted to get them, but the flames had drawn him in too far? Did they know he was sorry? That he’d never forgive himself for what he’d done?

Would they have forgiven him?

His eyes burned as he lay there, lashes damp and pressed up against the pillow. He wondered if he could smother himself like this, snuff himself out the way you did a candle.

He wouldn’t. The thought was fleeting and something he knew was born out of grief instead of honest desire. Len never would have left him alone if it had been a real thought, because he was bad at people, but Len knew demons in ways Mick knew they needed to talk about and probably would never have the guts to.

He thought of the way Len had clung to him the day they died, holding Mick to his chest and never telling him it was going to be okay. Len wouldn’t lie to him like that. He could be closed off and pragmatic, but he’d also watched Len make a mug of hot chocolate the way Mick’s mom had taught him and just stare into it until it went cold.

It wasn’t okay and he didn’t know if it would be again, but all alone in the cramped bedroom of their safe house, Mick thought Len had been right that he’d regret it if he didn’t go.

 

 

They didn’t talk about it when Len and Lisa came back. Len shooed Lisa towards the corner they’d blocked off to give her a bedroom for the days she couldn’t go back to Lewis and told her to get changed.

Mick saw how puffy her eyes were when she passed by the open door, cheeks still damp with tears. Even Len’s eyes looked a little red.

He watched Len peel away the suit he’d worn, ill-fitting but new, because Len had gone and actually _bought_ them all clothes for the service like he was trying to pay respect to Mick’s mother and her disapproval of his twitchy fingers. The clothes he pulled on were worn and he tugged an old sweatshirt of Mick’s on like the thief he still was.

“You hungry?” Len asked. “I told Lisa we’d get Big Belly Burger.”

It was better than Len offering to cook, but Mick still shook his head.

Len still got him a burger and left the bag next to the bed.

 

 

He slipped out of bed that night while Len slept, eyes catching the suit that still hung from the hook. He pulled on jeans instead, a too-light jacket pulled over his shoulders, and left. His mother would have liked if he wore the suit, he thought, but the thought of putting it on made his breath short and his vision start to tunnel out.

His fingers shook as he hotwired a car he found down on Emerson and they were still shaking when he pulled up at the gate of the cemetery. He left it there, weaving his way through stones in the dark until he found them.

His breath stopped. Broke. “Hi,” he whispered as his voice cracked and he lowered himself to his knees.

Alone in the cemetery with its tiny placards and fresh mounds of dirt, Mick cried.

The End


End file.
